Introduction and Concepts

This is a guide on how to configure an Arch Linux installation to authenticate against an LDAP directory. This LDAP directory can be either local (installed on the same computer) or network (e.g. in a lab environment where central authentication is desired).

The guide will be divided in two parts. The first part deals with how to setup an OpenLDAP server that hosts the authentication directory. The second part deals with how to setup the NSS and PAM modules that are required for the authentication scheme to work on the client computers. If you just want to configure Arch to authenticated against an already existing LDAP server then you can skip to the second part.

NSS and PAM

NSS (which stands for Name Service Switch) is a system mechanism to configure different sources for common configuration databases. For example, /etc/passwd is a file type source for the passwd database.

PAM (which stands for Pluggable Authentication Module) is a mechanism used by Linux (and most *nixes) to extend its authentication schemes based on different plugins.

So to summarize, we need to configure NSS to use the OpenLDAP server as a source for the passwd, shadow and other configuration databases and then configure PAM to use these sources to authenticate it's users.

LDAP Server Setup

Installation

You can read about installation and basic configuration in the OpenLDAP article. After you have completed that, return here.

Set up access controls

To make sure that no-one can read the (encrypted) passwords from the LDAP server, but a user can edit their own password, add the following to /etc/openldap/slapd.conf and restart slapd.service afterwards:

slapd.conf

access to attrs=userPassword
by self write
by anonymous auth
by * none
access to *
by self write
by * read

Client Setup

NSS Configuration

NSS is a system facility which manages different sources as configuration databases. For example, /etc/passwd is a file type source for the passwd database, which stores the user accounts.

Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf which is the central configuration file for NSS. It tells NSS which sources to use for which system databases. We need to add the ldap directive to the passwd, group and shadow databases, so be sure your file looks like this:

You now should see your LDAP users when running getent passwd on the client.

Name Service Cache Daemon

You can optionally run NSCD. This is a daemon that NSS uses to cache lookups and queries for network backends. This way you can login when the LDAP server is down, it will also reduce load on the LDAP server.

Start nscd.service using systemd.

Note: It is recommended to stop the NSCD when troubleshooting because it may mask problems by serving cached queries.

PAM Configuration

The basic rule of thumb for PAM configuration is to include pam_ldap.so wherever pam_unix.so is included. Arch moving to pambase has helped decrease the amount of edits required. For more details about configuring pam, the RedHat Documentation is quite good. You might also want the upstream documentation for nss-pam-ldapd.

Tip: If you want to prevent UID clashes with local users on your system, you might want to include minimum_uid=10000 or similar on the end of the pam_ldap.so lines. You'll have to make sure the LDAP server returns uidNumber fields that match the restriction.

Note: Each facility (auth, session, password, account) forms a separate chain and the order matters. Sufficient lines will sometimes "short circuit" and skip the rest of the section, so the rule of thumb for auth, password, and account is sufficient lines before required, but after required lines for the session section; optional can almost always go at the end. When adding your pam_ldap.so lines, don't change the relative order of the other lines without good reason! Simply insert LDAP within the chain.

First edit /etc/pam.d/system-auth. This file is included in most of the other files in pam.d, so changes here propagate nicely. Updates to pambase may change this file.

Make pam_ldap.so sufficient at the top of each section, except in the session section, where we make it optional.

Create home folders at login

If you want home folders to be created at login (eg: if you aren't using NFS to store home folders), edit /etc/pam.d/system-login and add pam_mkhomedir.so to the session section above any "sufficient" items. This will cause home folder creation when logging in at a tty, from ssh, xdm, kdm, gdm, etc. You might choose to edit additional files in the same way, such as /etc/pam.d/su and /etc/pam.d/su-l to enable it for su and su --login. If you don't want to do this for ssh logins, edit system-local-login instead of system-login, etc.